


No Nudes, Please

by Ambitious_Rubbish



Series: Kinktober 2020 [3]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Kinktober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26808529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambitious_Rubbish/pseuds/Ambitious_Rubbish
Summary: Liara T’Soni has been looking forward to this moment her entire career.So, of course, a certain mischievous human is going to ruin it for her.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni
Series: Kinktober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949869
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	No Nudes, Please

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt List: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23466580
> 
> Day 3: "Nudes"

Vindicated. After all this time.

After years of being looked at by the galactic xenoarchaeology community as some kind of crackpot for her controversial theories on the Protheans, now she was being hailed as the foremost expert on the subject. Years of research, of sifting through ruins for artifacts and relics, years of publishing one paper after another only to have her ideas dismissed as complete nonsense… it felt good to know she’d proven all the naysayers wrong. Felt even better to see all her hard work finally being recognized.

She’d been invited back to Thessia to give a lecture on her findings, and she relished the opportunity. Not just because it’d give her the chance to get some petty revenge for all the slights that had been thrown her way over the years, but because, at her core, Liara had always been someone who believed in the academic community. That knowledge needed to be shared, and that teaching someone something new was always an admirable goal.

But goddess, was she ever nervous.

Part of being a wandering recluse and spending most of her time alone at dig sites was that she’d never developed particularly good social skills. And public speaking was probably the one area she was most deficient in. She tried to tell herself that she knew the material (obviously,) and that was the most important thing. Everything else would just find a way to work itself out.

Yes. That was what she kept trying to tell herself. It’s just that it wasn’t really working.

There were still a few minutes before her lecture was scheduled to start, and the crowd was still filtering in. She had a little time.

She tapped quickly – if not quite frantically – at her omnitool, firing off a quick message to Shepard.

Commander Jane Shepard had declined to attend the lecture in person, and Liara couldn’t blame her. While she herself could ramble endlessly about Prothean culture, Shepard had never really been the… intellectual type. Not that she wasn’t intelligent, it was just that history bored her. Right now, she was probably arranging for a tour of the Serrice Council manufacturing facilities which were only a short shuttle flight away. Possibly even using her status as a SPECTRE to haggle for one of their newest model biotic amps.

It would be just the sort of thing she’d do.

Liara’s omnitool pinged.

Perhaps Shepard wasn’t too busy after all. It’d been less than a minute since she’d sent off that message, and already there was a reply. She cued it up.

“Know you’re nervous. Don’t be. You know your stuff. You’ve got this.”

The asari smiled. Jane was always so supportive. That was one of the things she lo-

She’d been about to say she loved her, hadn’t she? Even if it was just in her own head, there was a lot to process there. She did feel close to Shepard. As a friend, certainly. But… it really was more than that, wasn’t it? And did Shepard feel the same? Well, it sure seemed like she did, if that evening before the mission on Ilos was any indication.

Ugh. Why did this have to be so complicated? Compared to the dynamics of a romantic relationship – with a human, no less – giving a talk to a lecture hall full of skeptical (if less so than they once had been) xenoarchaeologists would be simple.

She was in the middle of debating whether she was being too cavalier about all this or not enough, when her omnitool buzzed again. Another message from Jane?

“Here. This’ll cheer you up.”

And underneath the text was an overhead view of a wide-mouthed cup filled with foamy, light-brown liquid. That would be “coffee,” the Commander’s favorite morning beverage and something she often asserted was “essential for life.” But in the foam, she’d written a message: “J + L” and then drawn what looked to be a little heart shape around it.

Liara giggled. All right, she would have to give it to Shepard for that one. It was a silly, nauseatingly cute gesture, and Liara adored it.

She keyed up a brief thank-you note, but before she could send it, another message came in.

And this one was a lot different in tone and… and content.

It took the asari a moment, but having seen what Jane Shepard looked like naked, she could tell that this latest image was most assuredly some part of the Commander’s anatomy. It took her a few moments more before she realized that, yes, that was indeed one of Jane’s breasts – the picture taken from extremely close range.

Liara blinked. What was Jane up to?

She barely had time to ask the question, much less begin to contemplate possible answers before yet another message arrived in her mailbox. This one was a close-up of a very familiar human female abdomen. Liara’s eyes widened. She’d seen it before, but there was something about this moment – the combination of mild nervousness being replaced with a sort of… primal excitement that made everything so much… richer. She savored the picture for far longer than she probably should have, committing all the details to memory: the faint lines of muscle, the irresistible shape of her navel (or, as Jane herself would have called it, her “belly button,”) and then she shut the silly thing off. This was no longer “relaxing” her, it was doing just the opposite. Distracting her when she very much needed all her wits about her.

The lecture hall was near to full now, and it was growing very close to the scheduled start time of her lecture. She had to clear her mind, she had to check her notes were prepared – all the kinds of things that a professional did right before they were about to engage in the most important bit of public speaking in their career to date.

A faint *Ding!* heralded the arrival of another message.

“No… no, I’m not going to look,” she whispered firmly to herself. “It can wait. I’m not going to look.”

She looked.

This latest photo was the raciest one yet, and it was clear, now, that Shepard was completely (and breathtakingly) nude. She was also standing in front of a mirror – most likely the one in the guest suite she had been offered while the crew of the Normandy was in port. The picture was clearly of Shepard’s… lower half… but Jane had strategically positioned her index finger to cover up (if only barely) the parts of her body that Liara most wanted to see at this point.

Liara shivered. She closed her eyes and tried her utmost to flush that picture from her mind. But she wasn’t entirely successful. She just couldn’t force herself to “unsee” what she’d just seen.

And then they called her name.

She stood up as straight as she could, stiffening her back so much, she might as well have replaced her spine with a steel column. She took a deep, shuddering breath…

And then she walked out and took her place behind the speaker’s podium.

Every eye in the room was on her, and she felt a sudden flash of panic as her mind floated the ridiculous notion to her that everyone knew she and Shepard were in an intimate relationship and that she’d been fantasizing about her human paramour just fifteen seconds ago.

No, if anyone was looking at her askance, it was because she was standing at this podium where she was expected to address a room full of some of the galaxy’s finest minds, and… she was saying absolutely nothing.

She cleared her throat and attempted to restrain her mind from wandering off in completely inappropriate (if also extremely pleasant) directions. And for a time, it worked. Once she began talking, outlining a thesis, detailing the research she’d done to support it – all things that someone in her field had extensive familiarity with, she found the going became much easier. It was no trouble at all, slipping back into the role of the academic. She was so used to it. And she almost forgot Shepard’s attempts to remotely seduce her.

But only “almost.”

If put on the spot about it, Liara would insist she was not really prone to letting lust cloud her judgment. Really, that particular emotion was one she’d only very rarely experienced. But that itself was actually part of the problem. Since she’d had so little experience with it, she also had little clue on how to suppress it when it reared its head. And so, when perhaps midway through her talk, her omnitool began clamoring for her attention again, she couldn’t stop her brain from haring off.

She’d (thankfully) had the good sense to at least mute her omnitool, so that the flurry of incoming messages wouldn’t create any audible cues that she was being bombarded with pornography, but that served to blunt only some of the overall effect. The little vibration against her forearm every time one of Jane’s messages arrived was an impossible to ignore reminder that (Yes, damn it all, she was going to say it again,) that the woman she _loved_ was naked and flirting outrageously with her.

She wanted to look. She even briefly entertained the insane notion of holding her arm between herself and the podium so that she could sneak a peek at what surprise Shepard had produced for her this time. But she restrained herself. Only just.

And while she eventually rallied, managing to conclude her lecture (albeit having to chop a little bit off towards the end simply because her brain was too frazzled to think about anything other than rushing back to her room and potentially tackling a _very_ naughty Shepard to the bed once she got there,) without drawing too much attention to her… somewhat disheveled state of mind, it was still a close thing. And not an experience she particularly cared to repeat.

By the time she’d finished her closing remarks, the moderator had thanked her for coming, and the next speaker had been called to the floor, Liara had only one thing on her mind.

\-----

She was actually very surprised to find Shepard in her room, fully clothed and in something innocuous, no less. Liara had been prepared for an all-out assault: to open the door and find herself being immediately pounce-tackled by an overly libidinous redheaded human. But no, Shepard was wearing a T-shirt and baggy sweatpants. Mundane. Banal, even.

“So… how’d things go?” Shepard said with a broad, impish grin as she gently swirled the amber-colored contents of her whiskey tumbler around before emptying it in one quick gulp.

Liara plopped herself down onto the bed, stopping only to kick off her boots before stretching out to her full length. “I think you know how it went,” she muttered, doing her best to sound put out. Jane had, after all, nearly caused her to utterly fall apart on this so very important day. She sat up, looked Shepard right in the eye and attempted to look intimidating.

She failed.

Shepard didn’t look fazed in the slightest. “Maybe I do. But I’d like you to tell me, anyway.”

“Tell you how you got under my skin, drove me halfway to insanity, and that I spent the entire lecture fantasizing about what I’d do to you once I got the chance?”

“It sounds interesting.”

Liara smirked. “I bet it does. But I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.”

“Awww, that’s too bad.” Shepard pouted, trying to appear hurt. That didn’t work, either. “There’s no need to be so mean about it. I just wanted to help you relax a little.”

“Really? Because you rather accomplished the exact opposite.”

“Did I?” Shepard said, in as sweet and “innocent” a voice as she could manage. Needless to say, she wasn’t very convincing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think a few pictures would get you all excited.”

Liara chuckled and decided to cut to the chase. “I don’t believe that for a moment. You know what you did. You knew what would happen. So if I may make a modest proposal for next time?”

“Oh, of course. I’m all ears.”

“Next time you’re trying to ‘reassure’ me? No nudes, please.” And now the asari was smiling as well. “I much prefer the real thing, anyway.”

“Do you now?” Jane grinned wickedly at her. “Well, I suppose we could work something out...”


End file.
